Directly from the pages of National Geographic

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
Jonathan M. Katz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Associated Press
January 30, 2008

It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.

With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

Yolen Jeunky, 45, collects dried "mud cookies" to sell in the shantytown of Cité Soleil in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 29, 2007.

Rising food prices have forced poor Haitians to depend on the cookies—a mixture of salt, vegetable shortening, and mud—for sustenance.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places such as Cité Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings, and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt, and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds, 3 ounces (2.7 kilograms, 85 grams) he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Believe me, the day will come when Americans too eat dirt.